RAPID: Hurricane Evacuations in the Age of COVID-19

Pandemics pose a potentially lethal threat to large numbers of people during a natural disaster. Understanding risk perception and responses to those risks is critical for emergency managers. This project will analyze public perceptions of risk of contracting a lethal virus that inform the choice to shelter in place during a hurricane, or to seek safety in a public shelter. As such, COVID-19 represents an unprecedented public health challenge to evacuation in hurricane-prone coastal areas as well as areas impacted by inland flooding. Emergency managers and public health planners, including federal officials, private sector, and nonprofit organizations need to understand how hurricane evacuation plans change during a pandemic. This study will help advance knowledge of hurricane evacuation behavior, risk, and decision making to anticipate crucial resource needs, to reveal the need for mutual aid agreements, and to improve public messaging during pandemics.

This study documents risk perceptions from those who made evacuation decisions from threatening hurricanes in the active 2020 hurricane season, starting with data collected from those impacted by Hurricane Laura. These post-hurricane risk perceptions will be compared to pre-hurricane risk perception data collected from 7,102 residents that that live in hurricane prone regions. The pre-hurricane survey found that almost half the respondents viewed themselves as vulnerable to COVID-19, and that 74.3% of individuals viewed the risk of being in a shelter during the pandemic as more dangerous than sheltering in place. This RAPID study will utilize a similar survey to collect data about how residents that experienced a hurricane in 2020, starting with Hurricane Laura actually evaluated risk and how they responded to their perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 and their utilization of shelters. Officials can use the results of this study to better inform strategies of shelter preparedness and pandemic risk mitigation to minimize risk to those who may be affected by hurricanes during a mandatory evacuation order.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.